On Mon, 05 Jun 2006 02:50:50 GMT, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:

She said everthing in the freezer defrosted. If it was a defrost
problem, the back of the freezer would be cold. You have a good
solution, but you are applying it to the wrong problem.

--

Christopher A. Young
You can't shout down a troll.
You have to starve them.
.


Not necessarily.
I've seen this problem quite a few times.

The most common cause is that the refrigerator simply isn't
defrosting, the evaporator coils are iced over and the fan is often
jammed with ice.

The back of the refrigerator won't be cold - nothing will be since
there is no air moving thru the iced up evaporator.

Most common reasons:

1. Defrost timer has died or is simply stuck. The older clockwork
ones, such as this refriegerator undoubtedly has, can be rotated thru
their cycle by turning the knob on them, either by hand or with a
screwdriver. By cycling the timer by hand two or three times, you can
force a manual defrost much faster than simply leaving the door open.

2. The fan motor has simply died due to stuck bearings or other common
failure.

3. In my experience, the actual defrost heater element rarely fails
but sometimes the upper temp limit snap-disk thermostat in series with
the heater element does fail.

4. The drainage tube typical at the bottom of a drip pan below the
evaporator has clogged with ice or some foreign substance. Some mid
70's refrigerators, Amana among others, had a chronic problem with ice
accumulating in this drip tube. Retrofits modifications were needed,
such as a metal tube bringing more defrost heat down into that
drainage tube.

5. A badly torn or leaking door gasket allowing so much warm air to
enter the unit that the defrost sequences don't keep up with ice
formation.

6. A refrigerator simply low on refrigerant due to a leak in the
sealed system. If that's the case, scrap the old unit.

Doug